ES312:Resources

This is a wiki for ENSC 312 – Biometeorology that provides information that is supplemental to the course and the material held on the course webpage at https://cyclone.unbc.ca/312/.

For Lab 1 of the course part of the assignment is to collaboratively create a webpage that has links to 10 or so (each!) “best” URLs (Universal Resource Locators) of information and data related to Biometeorology and Boundary Layer Meteorology. You should enter this information into this wiki by editing it below. You should categorize the information by the major headings shown below. Each URL should be accompanied by a brief paragraph describing what the location contains. At the end of your entry, put your initials in bold so that I can mark it.

Hints: use Google; try different search engines; search on course keywords you can extract from the course outline and text table of contents; try some of the URLs listed in the ENSC 312 homepage.

Web Links for ENSC 312: Biometeorology / Boundary Layer Meteorology

Below, by major category, is an annotated list of internet resources related to Biometeorology. The list was assembled as an exercise by the students in the class.

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Educational Sites

UNBC ENSC 312 Homepage This site is a course homepage for a third year course in Biometeorology. It includes links to lab exercises and other course information. [PLJ]

Biometeorology Glossary A glossary that defines biometeorology terms. [SP]

Science Daily Research news about Climate and Weather. [AY]

National Centers for Environmental Information The NCEI provides information and data on the climate and other environmental impacts. [CR]

JetStream JetStream is an online school service from the National Weather Service that offers information regarding introductory weather topics, including the earth-atmosphere balance and the vertical layers of the atmosphere. [SW]

Britannica Online encyclopedia with information on atmospheric science. [GG]

Urban Heat Islands Website that contains information on urban heat islands as well as maps showing data. [GG]

Reading Surface Charts This webpage describes how to read and interpret surface charts [TR]

Weather Instruments This webpage contains descriptions and uses for various weather instruments [TR]

Soil Temperature This PDF provides an overview for determining soil temperature variations with depth, including a glossary of terms and a bibliography [TR]

Energy Balance This webpage explains the energy balance within the earth-atmosphere system. [TR]

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Research Institutions

Institute of Biometeorology The Institute of Biometeorology of the National Research Council, Italy is a public no-profit research institution engaged in a wide spectrum of research activities in basic and applied meteorology [AY]

KU Biometeorology Lab The KU Biometeorology Lab is a research lab at the University of Kansas with research centered around land-atmosphere interactions. [CR]

National Center for Atmospheric Research The NCAR is a research center in the United States focusing on climate research and other closely related fields. [CR]

UGA Biometeorology Lab The UGA Biometeorology Lab is a research group from the University of Georgia with a focus on the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the vegetation. [SP]

RMetS The Royal Meteorological Society is an international organization that publishes open-source research and information on weather sciences. This society also offers an opportunity for people established in the field of meteorology to interact with one another. [SW]

Mesoscale Group The Mesoscale group is a group of researchers who publish meteorological research. [TR]

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Scientific Organizations

Canadian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society A group working towards advancements in Meteorological, Oceanographic and other environmental science related fields [SD]

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA is an agency that works to understand and predict the climate, as well as provide daily updates on weather, imagery and more. [SP]

International Society of Biometeorology The ISB is a group of scientists from around the world who work on the development of Biometeorology. [SP]

Students and New Professionals Group of International Society of Biometeorology A group of young researchers and educators working to share knowledge of Biometeorology. [AY]

National Geographic Society that offers scientific information of meteorological topics.[GG]

Natural Resource Defense Council NRDC is an organization that works to ensure clean air and water are available to people around the world. [GG]

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Research Projects

Working with Daily Climate Model Output Data in R and the futureheatwaves Package A model for R used to ease the process of identifying, and exploring multi-day extreme events in climate model output. [AY]

A Method for Estimating Planetary Boundary Layer Heights and Its Application over the ARM Southern Great Plains Site Research of using lidar images to estimate the height of the Planetary Boundary Layer. [AY]

UBiPlan This project, based in Greece, aims at analyzing the distribution of thermal properties in urban microclimates. The goal is of the project is to improve urban planning methods to allow for greater sustainability in these areas, as an attempt to combat against the climate change associated with urbanization. [SW]

Government Sites

Government of Canada Weather Information Official weather information Environmental Government of Canada. [AY]

GOC Historical Data This site allows you to search past weather conditions and data in Canada [TR]

World Meteorological Organization WMO is an agency within the United Nations who promote cooperation in atmospheric science, meteorology, etc... [CR]

Canadian Weather Stations and Forecast Regions This resource from the government of Canada provides users with area maps of weather stations and their associated forecast regions in Canada, so that there can be an idea of the dispersion of Canadian weather stations. [SW]

BC Climate Stations This is a climatic data catalogue from local weather stations distributed by the government. Along with meteorological data, natural resources and geographical data is also distributed here. [SW]

Environmental Protection Agency This is a US agency that provides information and data on air pollution. [GG]

National Research Council NRC is a federal research and development organization that publishes research related to biometeorology. [GG]

Weather Data Sites

Weather Viewer (WxV) This site compiles and animates real-time weather imagery from the web, including satellite, radar, weather map analyses, numerical weather prediction model outputs, vertical profiles, etc. [PLJ]

SpotWx This site shows location based weather forecasts allowing you to select various weather models. [RM]

windy.com Windy is an interactive site where you can observe real-time weather and pollution phenomena around the world [TR]

NASA Geostationary Weather Sat. Images This site allows you to view current weather satellite images [TR]

ArcGIS Indicators of the Planet A dashboard that provides daily and weekly updates on air quality, natural hazards, sea level, global temperature, etc. [SP]

NOAA A site that allows you to view various weather elements. [AY]

Purple Air This site shows real time data of worldwide air quality. [SP]

Global Climate Data This site has a dashboard for global climate watch as well as a free dataset gallery for climate data. [SP]

World Weather Information Service This site shows real time weather and forecasts for locations worldwide. [CR]

OpenWeather This site shows forecasts and weather maps worldwide. [CR]

Climate Data Climate Data provides past data along with climate projections that can be localized to specific locations [CR]

Climate Atlas Climate Atlas is a site that shows the past, present and predicted future climate of Canada. [SP]

IPCC Data Distribution Centre The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Data Distribution Centre contains climatic data from the past and present, and uses this data as the foundation for future climate projections. [SW]

Pacific Northwest Environmental Forecasts and Observations This website, created by the Northwest Regional Modeling Consortium, acts as a hub for various meteorological information in the Pacific Northwest, including satellite imagery, extreme weather watches, and air quality control. [SW]

IQAir IQAir provides global air quality maps and data. [GG]

World Air Quality Index WAQI shows global air quality maps and data. [GG]

Mountain Weather forecast This forecast by Avalanche Canada covers the mountains of Western Canada and explains the forecast in great detail which is missing from many other forecasts. [RM]

Environment Canada Federal department publicly offering weather forecasts, satellite imagery, weather radar, climate data, air quality, marine forecasts and hydrological data amongst many other things. [RM]

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Research Data Sites

International Journal of Biometeorology This journal publishes research related to biometeorology [TR]

Atmospheric Pollution Research This journal publishes research related to atmospheric pollution [TR]

Boundary-Layer Meteorology Journal This journal publishes research that is related to the the atmospheric boundary layer. [SP]

UNBC Library Research database of UNBC. [AY]

Academia This is a research site with peer reviewed journals in biometeorology and other topics. [CR]

Research Gate Research Gate is a site where researchers can share and review journals in scientific and related topics. [CR]

MPDI The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute offers access to open-source scientific articles. This particular link directs to the biometeorology section of the website. [SW]

Advances in Meteorology This is a peer-reviewed journal that covers meteorological topics such as climate modeling and climate change. [SW]

Software Manuals

R Manual This free pdf manual provides a good introduction to R, discussing simple manipulations, objects, factors, reading data, probability distributions, statistics, and basic plotting. [PLJ]

Intro to Data Visualization in R This site introduces data visualization in R using weather data. [SP]

WEATHER RESEARCH AND FORECASTING MODEL WRF is a next-generation mesoscale numerical weather prediction system designed for both atmospheric research and operational forecasting applications. [AY]

Programming in R This is an introductory programming manual for R created by the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology. All of the topics required for understanding the basics of R programming are discussed here. [SW]

RTutorial This site provides an introduction with some basic functions you can use in R. [CR]